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UNESCO's project "Empowering Local Radios with ICTs" aims to bridge the gap between poor people - especially women and girls - and the public debate on issues of local public concern. This is achieved through a series of capacity-building activities in local radio stations, improving the programming quality, providing training on the use of ICTs and helping them to increase their geographical range of news coverage with a network of correspondents. The project, furthermore, focus on gender equality actions and financial sustainability of the radio stations.

The activities were designed in a way to be sustainable and participatory; creating knowledge that will remain longer than the period of the project itself. Assuming this approach, it was necessary to understand and be deeply involved with the radio stations' modus operandi and community. Among the 26 local radio stations from 6 different countries that are currently participating in the second phase of the project, there is great diversity with some located in busy urban centers and others in remote parts of the countryside. Certain stations operate on modern levels and maintain active social media profiles, while others still have problems due to inconsistencies in electrical supply. Because of such variety, the first stage of the project was to carry out a research about the community and the local radio stations, getting information on the community listening habits, issues of local public concern in areas of health, agriculture and one another relevant area for the community. Regarding radio stations, UNESCO surveyed the programming quality, gender equality, ICT literacy, financial management capacity and existance of correspondent networks. All the gathered information is being applied along the project implementation as, for example, when choosing the topics of training, suggesting best ICTs or assessing best options to monitor the radio performance.

A series of Open Educational Resources are being produced from the trainings that are being carried out, aiming to broadly share knowledge about local radio. These resources will be open to copy, share, translate and improve, aiming a collaborative way to turn local radios into social service providers.

Access to national and regional expertise is important for the implementation of all activities in the project: research, workshops, survey, monitoring, etc. Despite sometimes being a challenge to find resources, the result is a multiplication of beneficiaries. Professionals and organizations involved are closely accompanied by our staff, assessing the activities to enhance the outcomes. In accordance to UNESCO work, another assumed guideline is to give priority to Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) when choosing Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) for local radios. Besides being no-cost, such software is developed to best satisfy the needs of the users, since it is developed by the users themselves.

Hamad S Mwinyi

Bilali Jihad Ramadhan

Lukas Kulwa

Joseph Kamata

Tieho Rankhone

Chimbidzikai Mapfumo

UNESCO HarareWindhoek

Valeria Nadal

UNESCO HeadquartersFrance

Abdullah Mfuruki

Pangani FMTanzania

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Community media, including local radio, should be supported from several angles: strenghtened skills and capacity-building, reinforced network and knowledge sharing, promotion of favorable legislative environment for sustainable growth. UNESCO is supporting community media practically by training professionals, but is also working with duty-bearers to ensure progress at policy-level.